This year, lets honour the people who risked everything to prevent war breaking out in the first place: Civil Servants.
Category
To Celebrate A Life
Remembrance Day 101
Yesterday was the hundredth anniversary of the very first ceremony of Remembrance at the Cenotaph in London.
Solace for a child that has not lived
Devika Bhat wrote an incredibly moving article in The Guardian a few days ago about dealing with the loss of her baby daughter in pregnancy. You can read it here. As she wrote, ‘I almost came unstuck when confronted with the task of choosing a reading: there is no established narrative around grieving for a … Continue Reading
How to Prepare for Your Digital Death
We live many lives, and for most of us, we increasingly live online: not just through social media, but for our banking and utilities as well. Thankfully there are now quite a few useful guides available, and while you can read them online, what they will all tell you is that you need to create an … Continue Reading
Margaret’s Final Curtain
A singer and entertainer all her life, Margaret was 89 when she died. A member of ‘The Russell Sisters’, she performed a cabaret mime act for many years in the many social clubs around Easter Road, Leith and Abbeyhill, and her sons, Rikki and Raymond, made sure that her last appearance was a hard act to follow! … Continue Reading
Rites of Passage
Can you imagine attending your own funeral? The old joke is that it’s the best party you’ll never go to, but that may no longer be true.Last year, in his Channel 4 series Grayson Perry helped to create a ‘living funeral’ for Roch, a man who’d been living with Motor Neurone disease, and it was … Continue Reading
Will you have a cup of tea, father?
I was a big fan of Father Ted – and not just because Father Dougal and I share a surname. A bit further down the billing but no less important to the show’s success was Mrs. Doyle, housekeeper of Craggy Island Parochial House, played by the brilliant Pauline McLynn. Her catch phrase invariably comes to my mind when someone offers … Continue Reading
A Greener Way to Go
I was delighted to see this article in today’s Guardian, not least because it prompted me to visit my archives, where I found this piece I wrote about resomation for Humanitie Magazine in 2010. When a body is buried in shallow soil, one of the principal biochemical aspects of natural decomposition is alkaline hydrolysis carried … Continue Reading
Thank you, thank you
I get lots of cards and messages from families and friends after my funerals and it’s hard to know what to do with them. Even though speaking about death is become a more accepted part of contemporary life, it doesn’t feel quite right to share them on social media, or at least I haven’t yet found … Continue Reading
Speaking at Funerals
I saw a story the other day that took me aback a bit. Father Joseph Anthony Toal is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Motherwell and he found himself all over the papers when an instruction he’d sent to his clergy was leaked to a journalist. He even made the Daily Telegraph. He told his priests to refuse requests … Continue Reading